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Come say hey and pick up a treasure if you are in the area. Email us to make an appointment.

Morning Light!	Cozy Corner and Our Bags!

Vignettes of our Actual Messies!

Walter Hanging Photographs	Silas Setting Up Track Lighting

Walter’s Original Oil Paintings

Scout Pochade Box	Handmade Ink!

Our Bookbinding Kits

Vintage Pencils and Dip Pens!	Bioplastic Pans from Poems About You that fit our palettes!

Of a Kind Book Necklaces Along with Our Classics.

Everywhere, Astonishments!

Søren, Silas, and I went to Philosophical Hall in Philadelphia with Katie to hear Catherine McNeur talk about her new book Mischievous Creatures. The title was enough to draw back to the city – and my homeschoolers are up for most adventures. Catherine, Margaretta, and Elizabeth’s stories were full of magic and wonder, local history and mischievous creatures! The erasure of these two women scientists came undone through Catherine's excavation, as one unexpected finding after another revealed their story.

Mischievous Creatures by Catherine McNeur on my desk!	Catherine’s Desk Caddy from Peg and Awl, which she’s had for a decade(!), on her desk.

Back to School!

“I will draw in class!”

Søren and Silas have always been draw-ers, and that they draw has always felt like a good thing to us. But when they went to public school, (and me before them), the message was different: drawing is distracting, or it shows you aren’t listening, or, just don’t draw because I said so!*

My guys actually had a relatively good public school experience, but this message persisted. When six year old Søren came home one day and told us that he was punished for drawing, we decided to do a little Back to School campaign with our recently launched desk caddies, chalk tablets, pouches, and journals. Søren partook in a magical alternative version of the punishment writing lines with “I will draw in class.”

I still love this.

That was then, this is now. We have been homeschooling for five years, which means that our creatures have a lot of free time to do what they love, as homeschool is very rarely (if at all) all of us at a table with textbooks and lined paper.⁠⁠ Søren, 15, is now dual enrolled in our local community college. Dual enrollment is open to most high-schoolers in America and very common for Homeschoolers.⁠ His first class is drawing!

As a family, we tend to go against a lot of currents in our world, and are fortunate to have built our own business, which gives us the freedom to do so. We’ve shared fragments of our recent decision to smallen Peg and Awl and move from a massive city building on an acre of land to our barn in Chester County, but I haven’t yet articulated on paper or screen, the whole of it – if there is a whole of it. My exhaustion of the words efficiency and busy certainly played a role. But here, the new-to-me word salutogenesis comes to mind.

Simply put, we smallened Peg and Awl for our mental and physical well being. We started Peg and Awl as a way to adventure and bring objects to life, and we ended up becoming managers of a business much bigger than expected. In smallening, we are gaining our freedom to make and explore once again.

Let us remember The Lorax:

“I went right on biggering… selling more Thneeds. And I biggered my money, which everyone needs.”
–Dr. Seuss

If you have any questions, I’d love to try to answer them. Perhaps here is where I open a Q+A. I think our story is an interesting one, unfamiliar, but also the kind of story that is gaining confusing and wondrous commonality these days, so I’d love to share!

*after sharing this on IG, some delightful souls came forth telling their stories of how they encouraged drawing in their classes. Absolutely not to be missed – there are always exceptions!

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I will draw in class.	I will too.

Our Pouch Collection

A Poem by 7 year old Søren.	Anselm Bookbinding Kits

Our Desk Caddies

The Sendak Artist Roll

See Søren’s work here!

Everywhere, Astonishments!

99% Invisible Podcast: Roman talks with Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, about the Luddites – a story that I, along with so much of the world – have misunderstood! PS: I first learned about them a little over a decade ago at a museum in Philadelphia that also had the story all wrong. I am on a wildly swinging pendulum around the conversation of AI, and this was the most compelling connection for me yet.

The Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast about Function Health: the other side of the efficiency conundrum! What is wrong with our healthcare system, and how we cannot seem to abandon the stuck channels for costs and fear of the unknown, and how Function Health is aiming to redirect our understanding of ourselves as impacted by the common standards of living, eating, &c. into a healthier future!

Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones: We all enjoyed the first episode, as Dan Beuttner, a familiar name in our house, visited Okinawa and some of their many centenarian inhabitants.

On My Desk, Potatoes!

A little On My Desk for this weekend! I usually use an Almond Mini Sendak, but today I borrowed spice – a new one – crispy clean and on my messy desk.

“Little by little, a little becomes a lot.” –Tanzanian Proverb

My friend Katie and I started writing a poem a day on the 25th April of this year. I’ve been filling my Orra notebook with them. We have well over 200 poems between us! Each day I put an envelope in my mailbox and lift the flag, feels like a solidly good start. As always, there is so much magic in the little things!

Potato Dreams

In my dream,
there were potatoes.
Not in my dream, too.
Potatoes.
I moved the dirt,
and found a potato.
Red. Red. Dirt. Potato.
Red. Yellow. Dirt. Potato.
Abundance, from old,
forgotten potatoes.
Under the horseradish,
potatoes.
In the sea of dirt,
and slugs,
and roots,
potatoes.
Red. Red. Dirt. Potato.
An endless abundance
moves into dreams,
like Tetris.
Potatoes.

I wanted to write about
death,
grief,
illness,
but instead,
I write about potatoes.
Sometimes we must follow the current is all.
We can’t always make waves.

18 August 2023

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Solvitur Ambulando Ring	The Saver Pouch

Iris Painter’s Palette	Orra Sketchbooks

Keep your notebook next to your bed for midnight scribbles!

Autumn Colors: What Remains! 

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Fog
What’s Left: Autumn Colors

The Classic Tote

The Keeper Pouch	The Marlowe Carryall

Red Maple

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The Small Hunter Satchel

The Maker Pouch	The Finch Satchel

Birch

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The Seaside Tote

The Hunter Satchel	The Mini Tote

Everywhere, Astonishments!

This Chestnut Delight was left in our Philadelphia building with other delicious pieces of old furniture in various states of over-use and decline. This one was missing her bottom rails, and the drawers drifted down, heavy with neglect. I scrubbed her clean and Bartram-Balmed her, whilst Walter chiseled out broken tenons and sistered antique oak and chestnut in place.

How I love Frankensteined objects, and how they live on! Hoorah!

And whilst celebrating potatoes, I am reminded of the chapter celebrating them in Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire.

Settling in at Home, after a Summer Full of Adventures!

We’ve returned home from a summer of endless on-the-going to bountiful messes. I look forward to being here for a while, to making sense of the mayhem, to writing about our adventures, and to making new treasures. I welcome walking, gardening, and autumn cleaning, and all of the head clearing that they bring! It feels a lot like our early days again!

The Barn
We are slowly making space and (too) quickly piling up possibilities inside and out. It all reminds me of one of those plastic number games – move this here, so that that can move there...

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Our palettes!	Charming old systems.

Lots of Scout Plein Air Boxes!	Classics remain!

Last Chance Bags! 

With our recent move from our Philadelphia Shop to our West Chester Barn, we have discontinued many of our classics. What remains is in stock and ready to ship.

Our bags are always the first to leap off of the shelves, so despite making a large inventory of Weekenders and Rogues before leaving our Philadelphia workshop, the numbers are dwindling!

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The Rogue Backpack	The Weekender

What’s Left in Our Home Collection! 

We started Peg and Awl with so many of these home goods meant to amplify the small spaces in our Philadelphia row home. When we moved to the Five Acre Wood, we brought everything with us, as they are timeless and work in a variety of spaces. Click through to see what remains and pick up something you've been contemplating – once something is sold out, we will not make more!

Many, but not all, of the the wood products are on sale.

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Mess Hall Knife Rack	Baguette Board

Cutting and Serving Boards	Apothecary Caddy

We have some Mystery Boxes left!

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The Essentials Kitchen	Silas sorting treasures for Mystery Boxes!

We launched our new ring!

Solvitur Ambulando: “It is solved by walking.”

We thank you for the warm reception and delightful emails – we've already started to make a second batch of rings!

Our Solvitur Ambulando ring is inspired by the endlessness of walking’s cures. I am ever in awe of how walking helps bring forth thoughts thought to cure idea-lessness, and conversely, how it distills abundance into a place to begin. How it settles listlessness, dulls irritation, and softens anger, and how it extracts tears when needed – walking always knows. Most of all, I am delighted daily at walking’s ability to illuminate the magic in everyday things!

Also, Gold is back! Now that we are settling into the new workshop at the barn, we are making gold jewelry again! All gold jewelry is made to order, which may take up to 4 weeks before shipping.

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Solvitur Ambulando waxes.	This cozy basement jewelry studio is a dream. Walter is wearing our Franklin Maker’s Apron.

Everywhere, Astonishments! 

	Since moving to the 5 Acre Wood, I’ve been going to local plant swaps*. I’ve learned so much and have traded a variety of plants. These Black and Brown Eyed Susans, which have now replaced thousands of Day Lilies, came from an incredibly rainy swap weekend in early Spring. *I’ve had to partake in Facebook for this – a worthwhile sacrifice.

NEW Solvitur Ambulando Ring!
“It is solved by walking!” 

I am a walker. I’ve always been a walker. My mom was a walker, too. We walked to get groceries (Monkee’s walk there, awkward schlep home), we walked through the woods on road trip adventures, laughing uncontrollably, and we meandered through our neighborhoods. I put miles on my legs before that, walking back and forth betwixt my parent’s homes – my grey, pointy-cornered, double-cassette player bruising my thighs and knees as I walked and sang with The Ramones, The Cure, and The Violent Femmes. Later, I’d uncover that walking whilst reading would make me a better reader. How I’d gulp down volumes and laugh and cry and talk out loud to my books having discovered details that stayed with me as I read, unlike before when I’d drift... I simultaneously strengthened my other senses, becoming hyper aware of obstacles as I ambulated. I know which books I’ve read in the rain, or whilst traveling, as they are swollen with the experiences of movement and weather. When Søren was a baby and Walter was in Iraq, Søren and I walked for miles together as I read out loud, Søren’s little face betwixt mine and the book.

But somehow, in our country, it still feels like a secret only a few of us are in on. As a family, we walk to ease our full bellies and ramble on about the day’s explorations or discoveries, and we bicker. For all the homes we pass, we see the same few movers wandering about: there are the dog walkers who are most abundant, the couples who’ve been walking together for decades, the rapping runner, and the lone walkers. There are bikers and joggers and mothers with babies in strollers, too, who pass by now and again, but they change.

Movement brings words to life, ideas to life, and life to life! It clarifies and distills and cleanses. It extracts and then magnifies the magic. How different I would be without all this walking! How different would you be? Pray tell.

Here at Peg and Awl, we celebrate the little things – we always have. We celebrate stories, craftsmanship, materials, old things, fragments, movement, thought, wondering and wandering. Everything we make has a story; we hope you enjoy this one!

This is long – over two years – in the making! Be it reminder, celebration, both and more, our Solvitur Ambulando ring is finally here in recycled Gold, Silver, and Bronze*.

*Gold: (14K yellow gold)
Silver: (hypo-allergenic 925)
Bronze: (an alloy that can give your hands a flair with tinges of green, less in cooler months)

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Working through the art and the lettering for the ring.	My walking companion finds her way in, of course.

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Our ring is made by hand – carved from wax, engraved, cast, and finished in our Barn Studio. Each ring and size has different nuances giving them the feeling of having been dug up after centuries underground!

We are making all of our jewelry in our Barn Studio now!

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This ring comes in a Muslin Bag with belly band...	...or inside an engrave-able jewelry box!

The silver tree coming out of casting with the investment ready to be fizzled away!	A tree of Solvitur Ambulando rings ready to be cut away and finished!

Gold is Back! 

Now that we are settling into the new workshop at the barn, we are making gold jewelry again! All gold jewelry is made to order, which may take up to 4 weeks before shipping.

Shop Our Jewelry!

Everywhere, Astonishments!

Night Walks: The ring works! I put one ring on Claire, an aspiring walker, (mine was already on), and we were off for a 3 mile night walk! These photographs are from our summer night walk — misty and even coolish, despite the day's sodden and heavy heat. I didn’t capture the creature sounds, which were perhaps even more astonishing!

Book: The Walk by Robert Walser

My Dad: Though I didn’t walk with him until this decade – my dad, who will be 80 this year, is also a walker. Or has become one – walking 50 miles a week!

Liberty’s Library shared this wonderful video of her Sendak Artist Roll!

Smudge and Other Pandemic Pages

“If you like to write or draw or dance or sing, do it because it’s great: as long as we’re playing around like that, we don’t feel lonely, and our hearts warm up.”
–from The Woman Who Killed the Fish by Clarice Lispector

I’ve been making books and filling them for as long as I can remember. The books pile up – a slow and steady drip of ink on paper that may someday push us out of our home. One of the gifts of the pandemic is a clear time frame. I’ve decided to go back into my journals – specifically, into the pandemic pages, to see what I could find. I found the patterns of our lives on repeat, everything obsessively documented as if we wouldn’t live without record of it. I found Pearl, and plants, grief and illness, disappearance and disappointment, homeschooling, camping, movement, and details so small I needed the quiet of a pandemic to experience them. It is a strange vocation, to be this kind of capturer of the quotidian.

“What is the conversation?” asks Claire, a few times. Conversation? I don’t know how to answer that. The conversation is on the pages, extracted from life, fragments rearranged, stories imagined, reimagined. Patterns, tatters. Is there ever an actual anything, or is everything imagined? There isn’t a conversation – there are infinite conversations and there are no conversations. It depends on who stands in front of what, and where. It depends on who is next to them. How engaged they are. How curious. It depends on what I say here, if anything, and whether you read it. Will you?

Just before the pandemic, I chose a word for the year, for 2020: The word was lightness. I wrote:

“My word for the year is lightness. I love this idea of finding a word to live alongside. So far, (so early but so far), it has freed me from the fear of not making the right marks. It has led me to say yes to a wintry adventure at the seashore where with wet knees and raisoned fingers, we searched for Cape May diamonds with the enthusiasm of children whilst the actual children played with drones, dipped their feet (and pants) into the frigid water, gathered a few specimens, and made their way back to the warm car. These are things that I love, but the weight of obligation and difference and the world’s expectations make it difficult to be so light. The more I forget this, the longer I sit. The longer I sit, the heavier I get – the weight of the dust settling upon me. Lightness. The word, my companion, reminds me to hover and to float – to move and to keep moving.”

It was the right choice, this word, and it came just in time.

From A Tear and A Seed	A sneaky peek!

The Things That I remember Are Not in These Photographs	SMUDGE! Left-handed (non-dominant) hand drawings.

A Tear and A Seed... drawings from a book I didn’t illustrate.	A stack of my smudge journals!

Our First Storefront! 

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“...the impeded stream is the one that sings.”
–from Our Real Work by Wendell Berry

The pileup is usually an effective way of moving us into high speed. We will open our barn doors tomorrow, for the first time, as a Peg and Awl storefront! It will also be filled with our art, which is most often squirreled away under our rounded bodies as we scribble, cut, or swish with whatever materials are at hand upon our pages.

We are still scrambling, but hope you come by and say hey! Email us for the address or find it at the Chester County Studio Tour website. Parking is limited – if ours is filled, park in the nearby neighborhood! If I have time, I’ll mow some roadside invasives for side-of-the-road parking.

Pouches!	We have a new batch of A Rural Pen ink!

Seaside Tote, Caddies, &c.	Some of our Last Chance waxed canvas bags are in the storefront!

New Prints from A Tear and A Seed (coming soon to our website, maybe...)	We will stock our jewelry in this old treasure!

Walter, Søren, and Silas!

We are still working and will share updates on Instagram! 

Søren has been working on this gigantic map for months! Come see it in progress or on Instagram @sorenscoutkent

Silas has been working with Copic markers and recently has been drawing cars, an interest he shares with his Pop – his grandfather!	Walter will be sharing portraits and landscapes in oil and pencil. He is still navigating his space! @pegandawlbuilt and @pegandawl

Everywhere, Astonishments!

The Chester County Studio Tour features 200 artists including one of my very favourite humans – Claire Rosen, at her home, Warwick Furnace Farm.	Heidi, whom I trust I’ll meet in person someday, is another wondrous being whom I am grateful to know. This book is gorgeous. Her language, exploration, and connection to the earth has inspired me for years. Now, in book form, tis utter magic!

Becky Tregear Art shared this wonderful video of her father painting en plein air with his Scout Plein Air Box!

Becky also shared this very thoughtful review of her father’s watercolor Scout. I love hearing her perspective as she walks through and discovers the features of the Scout, after watching Walter’s walkthrough video. Enjoy!

“Margo is joined by Margaux Kent, Co-Founder of Peg and Awl. Margaux and her husband Walter created Peg and Awl without a plan but rather a fortunate pairing of two minds, different but in sync. Together with a team they create from olde things, treasures found and recovered from misfortune and neglect, relics of the unusual, the confused and the macabre, cut and pulled and built into wearable curiosities, inscribable keepsakes and usable, long-lasting treasures.” – View on Window Chats

Episode 121: Designing and Making Useful Treasures That Inspire Creative Living With Margaux Kent of Peg and Awl

Margo and I discuss discovery, poetry, and all sorts of making; we also talk about the beginnings of Peg and Awl, the importance of promoting oneself and keeping everything in house, and more. But listen for yourself! I do blather a lot, but, erm, practice shall improve the ongoingness in time!

Each new Of a Kind collection allows us to dig around and find treasures within treasures. Every discovery holds a bit of the past, and the story and marks accumulated. They are a joy to put together and harken back to the best part of our origin story – the gathering of old things and the reimagining and reworking of them into once again useful objects.

We have a handful of journals covered with Antique Leather Postcards!	We have a selection of crossbody bags made with our limited canvas colors and vintage textiles!

Our Springy 2023 Of a Kind Collection!

Happy Spring! We are getting outside, digging in the dirt, and being surprised again at the bounty of colour, texture, and wonder of the season.

This Spring collection has a different color palette than we are used to here – a Spring of the past, which is familiar, but also a palette of Peg and Awl’s past. As we are working through the layers of the shop, we are finding so many good treasures once buried, like the beloved Antique Leather postcards. We have an abundance of small treasures, as well as some particularly special bags and colour arrangements!

Have a wander through our collection of bags and pouches made with homespun linen, a delightful variety of quilt blocks – these are much older and remind me of my childhood. There are also 1960s hardware store aprons, feedsacks, and 1930s dressmakers cotton, along with some of our favourite scraps of scraps, with which we made a variety of littles. Some of the bags are made with our classic waxed canvas colours, and others with our limited Autumn canvas colours – so many hoorahs!

Alt Sketchbook: International Dial Co.
View in our Shop

We have a few blue Watch Part tins in stock – they are nearly 100 years old and have varying degrees of rust and marks of past lives. Each tin comes with 100 sheets of Fabriano Watercolor Paper, cut to size!

My Non-Dominant Hand 100 Day Project from Last Year

We don’t have many of these tins, and we are always looking for more, but in the meantime – grab your favourite tin, cut your favourite paper and voilà! Here is our short video on cutting your own paper.

Crossbody Bags made with Vintage Textiles!
View in Our Shop 

The more I return to the same flea market, the more I know where to look and find treasures in overlooked corners. These feed and sugar sacks, tool belts, and homespun make magical fun of our classic bags!

Mini Tote with Vintage Homespun German Pillow Sham: Francis	Standard Tote with Vintage Feedsack: Laurel

Mini Tote with Vintage Hardware Store Canvas Half Apron: Moose	Heavy homespun German pillow sham transformed into a Classic Tote lined with Fog.

Classic Tote with Vintage Feedsack: Heidi	For those city dwellers, travelers and others wanting more security, the Totes have a separating zipper that tucks neatly in the bag when not needed.

Mini Tote with Vintage Sugar Sack: Sugar No. 2	Mini Tote with Vintage Sugar Sack: Sugar No. 1

Pouches made with Vintage Textiles!
View in Our Shop

We’ve been finding so many gorgeous textiles at Flea Markets lately that we must tame the scale of each collection. We’ve transformed the gathering of patchwork and scrap into useful pouches, giving them new life.

These pouches are perfect for littles that need organizing. As for me, I recently used mine to gather some Persimmon seeds from the wild! They’re hard to be without and you can never have too many!

These patchwork quilts appear to have been made by two, now three, sets of hands. The small squares were first hand-stitched – they were next put together with a machine, then waiting for me to scoop them up and have Tori make them into pouches with waxed canvas lining and backing.

*Custom Pouch Sizes in this Collection: We have 7 pouch sizes in our Peg and Awl catalog, but when we find a quilt block or scrap that is perfect as is, we make the pouch match its size!

Custom Pouch with Vintage Quilt Blocks: Peecha	Custom Pouch with Antique Hand-Stitched Quilt Block: Cass

Custom Pouch with Antique Hand-Stitched Quilt Block: Maeve	The greens are lined with our Fog waxed canvas!

Custom Pouch with Antique Hand-Stitched Quilt Block: Morley	Custom Pouch with Antique Hand-Stitched Quilt Block: Lucia

Custom Pouch with Vintage Quilt Blocks: Elke	Spender Pouch with Vintage Feedsack: Maude

Alternative Sketchbook: Chartreuse Watch Parts Tin!
View in Our Shop

I couldn’t resist this colour and the mini size. Tuck it in your Sendak and come what may! The smallness makes painting ever-accessible, and the shape makes a good painting feel complete!

Antique Postcard Journals!
View in Our Shop

One of a kind Antique Postcard mini journals are back! The cover is made simply, from antique leather postcards which bear incredible old handwriting, postmarks, and on some, a stamp! The insides, as always, are made of hand-stitched Strathmore drawing paper and work wonderfully with a variety of drawing and writing materials.

Antique Postcard Journal: No. 4	Antique Postcard Journal: No. 16

These postcards are covered in handwriting, markings, and sometimes stamps!	As with all our journals, these are hand-stitched!

These minis are each one of a kind, covered with a unique postcard!	These are made with Strathmore drawing paper and work wonderfully with a variety of drawing and writing materials.

The Secret to a Good Flea (Market) Day is a Good Friend! 

Read the story that celebrates the discovery of some of the treasures in this collection at a Flea Market in the thick of the summer heat!